WATCH: Former NFL Star Tell Anderson Why He Defended Jason Collins

LeRoy Butler was axed from a church speaking engagement because he supported Jason Collins's coming out.

BY Neal Broverman

May 06 2013 7:02 PM ET

After tweeting a message of support for Jason Collins, a professional basketball player who came out last week, former NFL player LeRoy Butler was canned from a speaking engagement. But the former Green Bay Packer told CNN's Anderson Cooper he regrets nothing.

Butler, who played 12 years for the Packers, said the unnamed church demanded he apologize, ask God for forgiveness, and delete his tweet of support for Collins. Butler refused to do so, saying he worried what a suicidal gay teen would gleam from that message.

"This is when I got angry," Butler said, "Some 16-year-old kid is somewhere in a closet with his father's gun that he found and he's thinking about putting it to his head because he's been tormented in school every single day because they may have found out he was gay or they suspected he was gay. He doesn't have a voice now."